Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum serves up a sickening rationale to excuse film director Roman Polanski fleeing justice for his rape of a thirteen-year-old girl in the 1970s: the Holocaust.

Polanski was arrested today in Switzerland on an arrest warrant based on his fleeing justice in 1977.

Wrote Applebaum in a web posting at "Post Partisan":

He can be blamed, it is true, for his original, panicky decision to flee. But for this decision I see mitigating circumstances, not least an understandable fear of irrational punishment. Polanski's mother died in Auschwitz. His father survived Mauthausen. He himself survived the Krakow ghetto, and later emigrated from communist Poland.

Applebaum undermines her insulting theory by noting that Polanski was cleared as an early suspect in the 1969 Manson Family murder of his wife, Sharon Tate in California, the same state where he pled guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.

The Smoking Gun has background on the case including unsealed gandjury testimony taken from the victim two weeks after the attack:

Following his indictment on various sex charges, Polanski agreed to a plea deal that spared him prison time (he had spent about 45 days in jail during a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation). But when it seemed that a Superior Court judge might not honor the deal--and sentence Polanski to prison--the director fled the country.

According to her testimony, Polanski plied her with champagne, half a Quaalude and then anally raped her.

Applebaum has ties to Poland, having lived and worked there--and being married (at least as of this 2006 column) to a Polish government minister.

I would like to believe it is her association with Washington Posties, and not her Polish ties, that has so appallingly affected her judgment.

Using the Holocaust on Yom Kippur to excuse a child rapist. Now that's shameful.

He can be blamed, it is true, for his original, panicky decision to flee. But for this decision I see mitigating circumstances, not least an understandable fear of irrational punishment. Polanski's mother died in Auschwitz. His father survived Mauthausen. He himself survived the Krakow ghetto, and later emigrated from communist Poland.

What a SICK pervert. He drugged and raped a 13 year old and he blames it on the holocaust???? He is a victim!! What a puke.

2
posted on 09/27/2009 3:11:41 PM PDT
by 2banana
(My common ground with terrorists - they want to die for islam and we want to kill them)

"mitigating circumstances" --- defined as the liberal habit of providing sob stories for nasty behavior in order to excuse it. Under such a scenario, anyone with a sad tale to tell about how hard their life was gets a Get Out Of Jail Free card. As long as the tale of victimhood meets the criteria of the left.

End result: right and wrong is defined by the left. No thanks.

3
posted on 09/27/2009 3:14:14 PM PDT
by LostInBayport
(The magnetic strip on the back of the Race Card is worn out from overuse.)

This is sickening to us, or to any normal person. But I’m willing to bet this arrest will raise enormous amounts of bad feeling among the pederasts, free sexers, and libs in Europe and in Hollywood. Not to speak of the French who sheltered him all those years.

For them, Polanski is a genius, a cinema trailbreaker, a good guy, someone who is misunderstood by us peons.

If Obama goes ahead and deals with the Swiss to extradite him, it will get him into big trouble with his typical supporters. And if he turns the opportunity down, it will get him into trouble with normal people.

Yeah, but the judge, I’m sure, was a Holocaust survivor too, so she’s excused. Therefore, Polanski has no excuse.

(Even if the judge wasn’t a Holocaust survivor, the judge was a woman and all women are victims and therefore all women are incapable of doing wrong.

Ergo, the judge did no wrong in hinting (hearsay evidence on this only) that she would disregard the plea agreement and sentence him to 100 years. Since the judge did no wrong, Polanski can’t use the judge’s reneging as an excuse.

The only thing “shameful” is it took 31 years to do this. The question is now why? You can’t hide money there let alone try to have a life without the 0bama hovering over your every move. Why now?
The 0ne has a plan for your every move. If you don’t believe me, so what. I could care less.
The 0ne will take care of you and your children. I wont.

It is rare for a Judge to not honor a plea bargain BUT it is never guaranteed that a Judge will accept it, and Judges are not ethically allowed to participate in the negotiations (although some routinely do, or at least give the sides a sign that he will live with it or not). One thing I read in the Larry King interview of victim: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0302/24/lkl.00.html
is that Polanski pleaded to Unlawful Sex with a Minor and that he had already served 45 days when being evaluated (where is the shrink’s report?). It sounds like it was reduced from a Rape charge to what amounts to statutory rape, a much less severe charge. He should just stick with his plea and see what the new Judge gives him. The former Judge has apparently passed away. The French and Polish authorities say they will appeal to Obama for clemency. It is out of his hands as it is a state charge. Maybe Ahnold will give him a break, or maybe he’ll get out his Conan the Barbarian sword and go medieval on him.

I am genuinely sorry for Polanski's family history, especially having his wife murdered in such a horrific manner. But I will have to confess complete bafflement at Applebaum's position. I cannot fathom the connection. This is, after all, the drugging and rape of a 13-year-old girl we're talking about here. In order for the one to be a mitigating circumstance for the other, shouldn't it have something remotely to do with it?

Let's think this through - do we hear Polanski saying, "I couldn't get Mauthausen out of my mind, so I drugged and sodomized a 13-year-old"? Pardon a bit of skepticism here. Or, "I was really upset at Sharon getting knifed by those Manson animals, so I drugged and sodomized a 13-year-old"? Actually we do not hear Polanski saying anything that absurd, and it stretches credulity to hear Applebaum attempting to say it for him.

I'll happily listen to Polanski's side of this, because I haven't really heard it yet. But that one just isn't going to cut it.

*If any of us peons sodomized a 13yo and fled to France, we’d be extradited back faster than our lawyer could cash his retainer check. *

Really? Ira Einhorn would disagree...well, he didn’t rape anyone, just murdered her and stuffed her in a trunk, then lived a cushy life in France for a couple decades.

I guess the common denominator is leftism. If Polanski had been a conservative, his ass would be still be in a California prison.

I didn’t read the article, but I’m surprised that the Holocaust was the cop-out...one would think having one’s 8 month pregnant wife butchered like a hog by the Manson family would get you a pass easier than the Holocaust...oh, well.

So, it is OK to drug and violate 13 year old kids if your parents were murdered during WW2. Or if your wife was murdered by a madman. This Appelbaum is a vile defender of the indefensible. The Washington Post is a good place for her.

Yes, and what she also fails to mention is that Poland just passed one of the strictest laws regarding statutory rape in all of Europe. From now on, any adult convicted of having consensual/non-consensual sex with a child under the age of 15 will not only be subject to a long prison sentence, but if they are released, they are to be chemically castrated!

So on the one hand the Polish government is touting how “tough” they are against sexual offenders and on the other, they are pleading for the US to let this particular sexual offender go.

The good news here is that if you look at the WashPost website, Annenbaum is getting her ass handed to her by her readership who are pointing out the faulty “logic” in her piece.

Polanski has managed to avoid dealing with this because France has refused extradition since he fled there as have some other nations over the years. He finally showed up in a place where the proper paperwork was in place and the local government agreed to cooperate.

There’s actually a great article on Salon, in response to Annenbaum’s article. The author there reminds everyone the “real” story here: Polanski raped a 13 yr old girl! (And she drives that point home, by citing the testimony of the then 13 yr old girl.) This wasn’t simply a case of consensual, yet statutory rape, it was in fact non-consensual rape and Polanski had plied the girl with drugs and champagne in order to lower her defenses before he forced himself on her. The guy even went so far as to worry about getting the girl pregnant, at which point he switched to raping her anally. (The full testimony is available on smokinggun.com)

I totally agree. If you travel down the BS road that Polanski defenders have taken you can make the same case for Hitler himself. Hitler had experienced the horrors of WWI, was gassed with mustard gas, imprisoned and faced a possible death sentence (that was sadly not carried out) for a failed coup attempt in 1923. Hitler’s life was so “sad” as to absolve him of the murder of 6 million Jews and about 50 million Europeans and Americans during WWII.

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